


The Fireside

by dragonfier



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Big Brother Derek, Drugs, F/M, Pack in College, except in the summer, no sterek sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 19:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1523033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonfier/pseuds/dragonfier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's not much to it; put the tablet on your tongue and stick the needle in your arm and you'll forget it all. Why do they keep trying to ruin it for you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fireside

**Author's Note:**

> ok I didn't really do a good job of explaining the background behind all of this so! Cora and the pack are at college in LA here, everyone else is home with family except Cora and Stiles, and Derek's staying with her to visit. Cora's freshman year was hellish and she spent the entire year experimenting with different drugs, and that's it, okay done!

There is so much burning inside such an enclosed space.

Cora feels it all here. The desperation, hope, loss, fear, and excitement of LA. She feels the pain and the happiness and the desperation. She dances with it, numbing her own anger.

Smoke trails over shadowed heads, lights dance from all directions (casting lines of red and white and green and blue and purple on sweaty faces), and the music is thundering, sending tremors beneath Cora’s feet. She believes firmly that she is becoming as light as a petal even though the sweat makes her feel heavy.

It’s disastrous, but peaceful, the wailing of the singer mixed with the shouts of the crowd.

The drugs make her feel like she’s spinning, forgetting all about the year that prefaced this. For the first time this summer, she is happy. She has almost forgotten the faces that watched her, devoured her on campus, eating her alive.

She shouldn’t have taken so many, but she craves more. When the song ends and her limbs stop thrashing to the drums, she pushes through bodies, feeling them touch her, wrap around her immensely, and she’s comfortable.

Strangers eye her when she walks into the bathroom. She smiles mean at them and looks at herself in the mirror; the cherries on her lips and the blackberries on her eyes washed in the fluorescent. A girl approaches her, asks her if she’s buying. She smiles bright, pushing hair out of her eyes.

“Yes. What do you have?”

She buys one of everything. She walks into the stall and puts the tablet underneath her tongue, waits for it to melt before she bites into the mushroom. Saves the joint in her dress pocket, the baggy of white powder tucked safely in her bra for tomorrow. She is isolated for a moment as she waits for the flow of her blood to rise and the colors in her eyelids to spin.

She giggles as she walks out of the bathroom.

The room looks different now, the music lulling, the faces she sees looking bared and white and terrifying her – in a good way. A boy notices her, some stranger, and he smiles at her, presenting fangs, she thinks. She shudders as she disappears into the shadows along the wall, her throat suddenly dry.

“Cora!” someone calls, and she glances over her shoulder twice. “Cora,” someone calls again, taking her forearm gently. “Cora,” Stiles’ face comes into focus, dark, eyes red and puffy, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. She remembers he drove her here. He searches her laughing face and she marvels at him. He looks exhausted and on fire.

“Jesus, Cora. You didn’t take it easy at all, did you? How much have you had tonight?”

“Not enough,” she replies, words buzzing in her ears. “Dance with me.”

His eyes widen, the reflection of the lights turning the brown into kaleidoscopes. He always tries to get close to her and here she is, offering him this. His advances towards her, a marathon that started in the first week on campus, had been a joke to her, but tonight she doesn’t care about jokes. She wraps her arms around his neck and sways even though the music is fast.

“Cora,” he says, stuttering. She laughs as he takes her wrists and places them against her side. “You look like you’re going to vomit.”

“I’m fine,” she says between giggles.

“Come on,” he says. He takes her hand and leads her away from the wall. Boys stare at her as she moves through the crowd, she flashes them smiles and tosses her hair, even though they look demons to her.

As soon as she is exposed to fresh air, she teeters to the curb and vomits. Stiles is behind her and rubbing her back, whispering to her to get it all out, that it’ll be okay. She retches until her stomach won’t let her anymore.

It’s sobering, vomiting like that, even though it burns her inside and out. She sniffles, wiping at the drainage on her face.

She doesn’t feel beautiful anymore when she stands up, but Stiles looks at her like she is.

She starts to say thank you but bites her lip. His eyes are full of concern and pity, wiping any thanks she had for him.

“Need a ride home?”

“Yes.”

She leans against him as he walks her toward the parking lot, away from the noise and the people and the drugs. He helps her into the seat and she falls asleep in the Jeep, hoping she doesn’t have to wake up.

*

The next morning, Cora is in the guest room, smelling her brother’s aftershave on the pillow he’d been crashing on. She sweats through the flannel sheets and her head pounds when she rolls over, throat burning.

Water sits on the nightstand. Cora reaches for the joint she still has in her pocket instead, the baggy of white powder still in her bra.

Cora is still in her skintight dress from last night. She examines herself in the mirror with the lit joint dangling in her fingers and the headache pounding unceasingly. Her skin is white, translucent with sweat and the afternoon sun peeking into the room, and her long hair is stuck to her skin and falling in strings, but she feels beautiful as she inhales the joint. She strips out of the dress and slides on a big flannel, not bothering with pants.

The apartment is cold and she appreciates this. Derek’s large frame sits on a stool by the counter, staring at the brick wall in front of him, an untouched coffee mug steaming into the air. He snaps his attention to her and she cannot read the expression on his face.

“Hello,” she says.

“You look sick, Cora.”

“Thank you.”

"How much did you do last night?”

She crosses to the kitchen cove, pouring herself a bowl of cereal. “Not enough.”

“I see you’re at it again.”

She says nothing, only sucking on the papered joint again, for his benefit now.

Drinking his coffee and eating her cereal, Cora ignores the stare Derek is giving her from behind. “So, what,” Derek says abruptly. “Are you just never going to be sober again?”

“That’s the point.”

*

Cora sleeps all day, until she hears the front door slam open. Lying still, she listens to Derek talk to someone – loudly, demanding answers – she gets up and walks to the door, listening harder, making out the sound of Stiles’ panicked voice and swinging open her door. Both boys stare at her; Derek looks ferocious and Stiles looks trapped.

She smirks, crossing her arms against her chest.

Stiles clears his throat. “Hey, Cora,” he says. “You okay?” He ignores the glare Derek is giving him.

“I’m fine, thanks.” She sits on the couch. She is still only wearing the flannel. “Well, I was.”

“You should put some pants on,” Derek growls, stalking across the apartment and slamming himself behind the bedroom door.

“I thought he’d have gone back home by now. Pleasantly proven wrong.” Stiles mutters. Cora stares at him as he comes to sit down beside her; he looks normal, eyes bright and bouncing around the room. There is safety in his familiarity. “You don’t have to put pants on if you don’t want.”

Cora rolls her eyes.

“So, what are you doing today?”

“Nothing with you.”

“I – wasn’t – that’s so hurtful, Cora Hale.”

“Do you want something, Stiles?” Impatience is bleeding into her tone and she feels bad, but she doesn’t soften her expression.

Stiles wets his lips. “Last night, you were wasted. I came to see if you were okay, and your brother just –attacked me, accusing me of giving you all these drugs and letting you get out of control.”

“Oh.”

“What was wrong with you?” he’s avoiding her eyes, grasping his hands in his lap. “I’ve never seen you go at it so hard. In fact, that’s all you’ve been doing lately, drugs –"

“Stiles,” she bends down and stares at him until he meets her eyes. The kaleidoscope she saw inside his pupils is gone; now it’s just blackness. “Please shut up.”

He acts as if she doesn’t know she is spinning out of control. He acts as if she should care.

Stiles bites down on his lip. “Well,” he says. “If that’s all you wanted to –” he cuts himself off and gets to his feet, wiping his palms on his the back of his pants. She sits back against the couch, watching his expression change from worry to anger. “I get the whole edgy, _I-don’t-need-anyone_ act, Cora, fine. But I – ”

He doesn’t know what to say to her. She feels the absence of his words strung between them, holding them bound. She looks at him, hard, silent, waiting.

“I don’t know,” his voice is so quiet she isn’t sure if he even means her to hear. He shakes his head. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

Cora watches him pick up his keys and slam the door shut behind him. She misses his familiarity already.

*

That night, Cora takes a shower and puts herself in another skintight dress, pulling her hair into two knots on top of her head. She does her make up and a line of the white powder she’d had all day.

She looks exciting, dangerous in her knee high boots and leather jacket, dark makeup covering her face, but she isn’t. She feels like a shell as she walks down the street, searching for some gravitational pull.

After half an hour of walking, she uncovers one. Someone at a bus stop asks her what she’s looking for.

She smiles. “Anything you have.”

His face changes in the streetlamp, becoming rigid, hard, scaring her. “I’m not stocking kids’ toys,” he says. “There’s some bad things here for you.”

“I want them.”

Like a trainer leading his dog with a treat, he manages to convince her to come to a party, where he can guide her into using properly. He promises her it will be free if it’s with his friends. Cora doesn’t look at him as they walk together; she is losing herself on the beaten, stricken side of the town, letting it lead her down the rabbit hole, down to the darkest place she can find.

She’s lying on someone’s floor when she takes time to think about her surroundings, her limbs sprawled. She can’t see anyone’s face, blurred by the darkness, but she hears them yell, talk, slam things. Sees the flame of the candle as someone holds a spoon over it, watches their green eyes dance hungrily over the reflection.

Nuzzling her face into the leather jacket, she offers her arm to the face and feels them stick the needle in her vein and falls down, down, down, until she hangs there, strung up infinity. The noose of her thoughts is cut down and she lies on the floor of her nothingness, ice and fire burning her up.

*

Cora doesn’t leave the house until four days have passed. The police come and she has to run, head pounding as she does. She has not been sober once, switching between the wonderful feeling of only existing with heroin to swallowing tabs of ecstasy or pills with acid to make her laugh for the night.

She tastes metal on her tongue and it makes her dizzy. Stomach clenching, she doubles over and vomits, pretending Stiles is behind her, holding her hair back and telling her it’s okay. She notices, wiping her mouth, that she has drawn and written on her skin with black markers, angry marks swooping over the canvas of her limbs. A lot of the phrases she has written do not make sense as she stares at them in her sober state; however, her right arm catches her attention. She had written the same word until the marker had bled out on her pointer finger.

Stiles, Stiles, Stiles, Stiles. Stiles’ name covers her arm. Swallows her skin whole. She feels pitiful at the sight of it, embarrassed, nauseated at herself.

She forces herself to walk, ignoring her reflection in the glass windows of the shops she passes until she walks into a coffee shop she recognizes.

Cora feels the few people in the shop stare at her as she walks by, doesn’t smile at them, doesn’t flip her hair. She orders a small coffee from the worker with acne, pretending she doesn’t see as he gapes at her as she pays with the few spare dollars in her jacket pocket.

“What time is it?” she asks the worker bleakly. She doesn’t have her phone to check, having purposely left it behind at her apartment.

“Uh, it’s a quarter to eight.” She can conclude by the light outside that it’s eight in the morning.

 _I’m going to tell Derek to leave,_ she decides, sitting on a stool and staring into the mug. It’s her apartment anyway; he is only there to visit, not conduct her actions. _He has no right to make me feel guilty for this._

But guilt is all she feels. The black inside the mug transforms her eyes into Stiles’, brown, loud eyes; the kind of eyes that weren’t remarkable but calming. Stiles is, after all, calming to her, in the strangest way possible. He gives her a sense of well-being even though she has spent months trying to ignore him. His advances on her had been amusing, but now they feel like a treasure.

She misses him. His chattering annoyances from beside her at the club, the rides he’d offer her whenever he caught her walking, offering to help her study for whatever exam, eying her hard as she bought a baggy of weed in front of him. God, she knows it hasn’t been long since she’s seen him, but it feels too foreign after having him by her side all summer, and the bleakness tuned to the needle in her arm made time feel so much longer.

The needle in her arm. She rubs at the track marks there, underneath his name, closing her eyes hard. She _already_ craves it. How could she _already_ crave it? Forcing some coffee down, she tries to think of something else besides Stiles and drugs, but her will is weak.

Cora leaves her coffee deserted and starts to walk in the rain. She has barely walked ten minutes toward her apartment when she hears a horn blaring behind her, accompanied by loud music.

“Cora!” yells someone and she turns, the most important blue Jeep in the world slowing to match her pace. Stiles isn’t paying attention to the road before him, smiling widely at her. “You’re okay! Get in!”

She would have resisted if it were any other day. Immediately, she walks toward him and climbs inside, folding her hands in her lap and sitting with perfect posture, her cheeks burning. She feels close to tears and she doesn’t really want to know why.

Stiles has turned his music down and is pulling over to the curb. “Where the _hell_ were you, Cora?” The ridiculous smile and the relief in his voice has turned to concern and a bit of biting anger. “Derek had my balls between his shoe and the ground – and every dealer you had in your phone. We had no idea where you had – ” Stiles stops suddenly because Cora has bent over, head in her hands, and is crying silently against her palms.

“Oh,” he breathes, bitterness in his tone melting. “Cora, please don’t cry. What’s wrong?” She hears his seatbelt unbuckle and he has moved close to press himself against her, taking her hands. “Please tell me what’s wrong,” he says after a few minutes of this.

“I’m so scared, Stiles,” she breathes out, her hands trembling as she removes them from her face. “I’m so scared.”

This is all she says. Her jacket has come up to her elbows and she feels him stare at her arms; first at all the words, phrases, mingled on her skin, she stares at them too until her tears blur her vision. She hears his breath intake as he sees his name written over the track marks, blotting them out. Gently, he brushes his fingertips across his name, tracing the marks.

“What happened here?” he barely whispers. She tilts her head to look into his eyes; he’s only a few inches away. Her expression is telling, and his mouth forms her name, a mixture of fear and pity in his eyes.

She knows what she looks like today; her hair is covered with grime, her skin is pale and stricken, her eyes have dark bags encircling them. She is aware of how she has been acting; the evil, sickening way she has been acting. She is so, so aware that it makes her chest hurt, her head spin.

She doesn’t know how Stiles looks at her like she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. But he does, and she covers his hand where he is touching her arm with her own and his skin is warm to the touch and it fills her up.

“Thank you, Stiles,” she whispers, the first time she's ever said thank you to him. She turns her face away after this, feeling too lost, too cold, too stricken with guilt to kiss him.

He says nothing, for once. He keeps his hand in both of hers as they drive back to the apartment.

When she climbs out, she turns to look at him, hard, through the window. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining through the clouds.

“I don’t know why I’m like this,” she says after a few seconds. “But I’m sorry I am.”

Stiles presses his mouth in a firm line, staring at her before he nods quickly. She knows she has disappointed him as she touches her fingers to the aching scab on her vein. She already wants more, but she is anchored in Stiles’ expression.

“I’ll try to get better. I’ll try to get better for you.”

“And for Derek.”

“And for Derek.”

He turns up the radio, smiles weakly at her, and drives away.

“I promise,” Cora says to the air, watching his Jeep disappear. “I promise I won’t disappoint you.”


End file.
